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British Cycling accused of burying 2012 report detailing bullying

As an independent investigation into an abusive culture in British Cycling’s high-performance programme faces further delays, the federation has come up against more criticism from UK Sport after it was revealed that a similar internal inquiry had taken place in 2012 but was not acted upon.

The Guardian reported Tuesday that former British Cycling CEO Peter King conducted a post-London Olympic Games performance review, interviewing more than 40 different riders and staff from the programme, but UK Sport only saw the full report in 2016.

UK Sport CEO Liz Nicholl said that had her organisation seen the full report, it could have addressed serious issues such as those raised by sprinter Jess Varnish that led to the resignation of Shane Sutton before they became a problem. “Yes, of course. But what we received from them as a summary of what the report was saying did not raise any alarm bells at all,” Nicholl told The Guardian.

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Nicholl stopped short of saying the report was covered up but said that only delivering a summary to UK Sport was a “complete lack of transparency”.

“We wouldn’t expect that to happen,” she We would have expected to receive the full report at the time. That’s a complete lack of transparency and that’s a relationship that is not acceptable in terms of what was shared with us as opposed to what the actual facts of that report were.”

King collected input from staff and riders on the condition of anonymity, but the report was kept internal to British Cycling and only shown to a select few. Ian Drake was CEO at the time the report was delivered to British Cycling, and Brian Cookson was president.